across from a stranger

I sat across from a stranger. A friend of a friend. Life here goes like this: want information on something? A text of introduction is all you need to become friends in an instant. Be invited to her house for coffee at any time.

And we shared our mutual stories. My easy life in Canada, wanting more. Her life turned upside down in Zimbabwe.

“I didn’t have food for my children,” she said, “They had no future, no stability – a life with that much uncertainty isn’t truly life.”

And when I asked if she would ever go back, return to her home, the home she loved?

“It’s not my home anymore, I mean, physically it is, but it doesn’t resemble anything of what I grew up in, got married, began raising my children,” she shrugged, “what would I go back to?”